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A LITTLE WORD OF ADVICE
Ask my sister and she will confirm that this was one of my dad's favourite phrases when we were kids. He'd lower his reading glasses to he end of his nose, and then peer over them and say "let me give you a little piece of advice". Usually, we knew that we were in for a bollocking.But many years ago, maybe in the early seventies, he wrote a booklet of 'little words of advice for people who were thinking of driving in Africa, and in particular across the Sahara. I have a copy here in front of me.
"It may be that you want to make the trip just for the hell of it or something to tell your grandchildren about. In either case it is one of the few great adventures left. When you've finished your evening meal, look up at a sky whose colour will remind you of purple grapes; you will see more stars than you'll ever believe."
He goes on to explain the type of car you will need (apparently Land Rovers are the most common vehicle, especially in the Sahara, but he reckons they are slow and uncomfortable).
He advises that you should have a comprehensive first aid kit and a first aid book (available, he says, from the St. John's Ambulance Brigade for 75p!) and should include water-purifying tables and scorpion and snake bite kits. He gives a complete list of equipment required for both car and crew and recommends that you don't forget a bottle opener. Then he explains the paperwork necessary. He says, IN CAPITALS, that you shouldn't drive at night. This was advice he was constantly given and consistently ignored.
Then there are useful tips such as what to do if you are stranded in a sandstorm. He describes the sort of currency you should take as "many of these places wouldn't know a traveller's cheque from a lump of coal". Then there's a part that makes me chuckle - it sort of from one extreme to the other:
"If you are unlucky enough to get bitten by a scorpion remember that only a person in a low state of health is likely to die. The same applies to most snakes."
With that said, having told you that you're unlikely to actually die, he returns to more practical matters and becomes almost a travel agent:
"If you are in an orange growing area, buy plenty for desert trips. They are cheap and the most desirable of foods in the heat".
From scorpions to oranges in the space of one small paragraph. Typical...
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Round the world delays?
In 1963, Autosport was pretty quick off the mark. As soon as Eric Jackson and Ken Chambers returned from their epic drive round the world, Fort Motor Company sent out its press releases and presumably the PR people were straight on the phone to Autosport which was, and remains, the source for motorsport news. If you click the image above, you’ll see a larger version of the report.
It began:
If you happened to be at London Airport at midnight, 2nd. September, you might well have wondered what to make of a car, shrouded in wraps, that was being loaded onto Pan American flight 161 bound for New York. It was, in fact, a perfectly standard Fort Corsair, registration number 590 UOO, at the time unnannounced to the general public. This was the beginning of a 29,991 mile drive round the world and it was to last a mere 43 days! The trip was the fastest of its kind and it would have been achieved quicker still had it not been for several frustrating customs delays.
Oh, it was customs’ delays, was it? Hehe, I have the advantage. I was brought up being told about the marathon drives and of course, I have had the
damn jobpleasant task of editing my dad’s memoirs.Naturally, I’m not going to give the game away – I very much hope that you’ll be reading the book soon – but believe me, customs delays weren’t the problem at all. And until now, my dad hasn’t really been able to make the truth public. Buuuuuuuut it’s all in the book!
I have a lot of books and cuttings that feature the various trips, all with my dad’s little hand-wriiten side notes. The most common one says ‘bullshit’. One was:
Jackson, who was not only the owner of a Ford dealership in Barnsley but was a long-time member of the Ford Rally Team didn’t even blink. He and fellow-Yorkshireman Ken Chambers had tackled this sort of thing before.
My dad’s comment was “Ken would turn in his grave if he knew he’d been called a Yorkshireman!”